The Art of The Sword
by kheelwithit
Summary: The reason Sharrkan loves swords more than magic and will fight to the 'till-Ja'far-bans-drinking (arguably worse than death) to prove it.


Sharrkan has never been able to be so horribly angry with Yamuraiha than when she says magic bests swordsmanship.

Its disgusting. Fundamentally so. It really should occur to Yamuraiha of all people why.

Sharrkan has always been born prince of a nation, attractive, wealthy, intelligent, male, free. The list goes on and on.

Anything he ever wanted rested at his fingertips, he never had to so much as move. A woman? In his chambers by the afternoon. A new tutor? He could take his pick.

But the _sword_. The sword didn't care one bit about what he was born as.

And showed it boldly the first time he ever tried to pick it up.

Eleven years old and more spoiled than he'd like to admit, he found his first love in the courts while being entertained. A gladiator man. Well, it wasn't the man so much as what he could do, and not so much as what he could do than what he could do it with.

The sword.

In far out retrospect, the man was absolutely terrible with his weapon, and Sharrkan supposes it was because he'd never held it before, knew nothing about the art. His father had thrown it to him when he walked into the room and it glinted in the sunlight before clattering at his feet on the sunwarm marble. And additionally, he might've been panicking because not a moment later, a man followed him out of the entrance, bound in chains and looking like wilderness itself held back by ribbon. Larger and tougher and younger. Brilliant red hair, a stud under his lip and stayed only by a pair of blades at his neck. The fight, he never really knew what happened, only that the sword was still on the ground and that the Gladiator was losing. Painfully. There was a lot of blood. And only as the man had pinned him down, fiercer than anything he'd seen, did the Gladiator win.

He picked up the sword and it slipped through the Fanalis like a knife through butter.

And maybe it's sick, but witnessing the power in such a simple weapon, that it could take the life of such a creature, one that smacked around the Gladiator around like a cat with yarn and crushed his bones and made the halls reverberate with screeches of pain- even in hands not trained to hold it, it could do this much. It could make blood run like water, down the handle and up the forearm of the Gladiator that never appeared after he left that afternoon.

Sharrkan requested the weapon immediately. And he got it not ten minutes later, cleaned and like it hadn't run a man through.

It was a sword from somewhere far away, it had no hilt, though it was longer than his own arm. He was arrogant. Tried to pick it up without thinking of where the blade started and the blade sliced through his hand not at all unlike it sliced through a body. A cold pain that welled up into burning and a sting that made his eyes water gave him a scar across his palm that he still has.

He hated the art, for a while after that. He blames it on his youth and naivety, that he thought that he was above being cut simply for his upbringing and luck. That his numerous tutors and jewels might have saved him from being cut in his ignorance. But no matter how he hated it, he trained with it with the desire to dominate it like some sort of beast more base than the Fanalis. Of course, he didn't, not really. His tutors were afraid of displeasing him and so could not teach him. He thought, for a time, that swordsmanship came easily when you had tutors, expensive manuals.

And then he got into a fight.

And pulled his sword out, arrogance nearly blinding.

And he lost. Badly.

When he woke up in the hospital, he woke up stripped of any titles he could have ever had.

Not officially, but in the eyes of a swordsman. Which was far worse.

He couldn't even hold his own, was beat down mercilessly, cut up and stabbed through both shoulders easily because he didn't train enough, didn't stay calm, didn't do anything right. In the eyes of a swordsman, if you can't do that, you aren't fit to live.

The only reason he survived was because he was a prince. Sharrkan wishes the swordsman wouldn't have stopped for that reason of them all.

Even before he heals, he's back outside, hobbling and sore and generally uncomfortable in the streets before dawn, searching for someone who knows the sword, but not his name.

For someone to make him feel like nothing and make him reach up further, further, until he earned his arrogance.

He found it in Sinbad, but that's another story.

Yamuraiha was born with nothing except for her magic.

And her parents.

Who left her because of her magic.

Sharrkan doesn't know a lot about her past as he only ever cares about what he can change, but he knows enough to say that if she didn't have her magic, she'd be dead.

There'd be one less to bicker with, drink and train with, one less person by Sinbad's side. They'd be the Seven Generals of Sindria instead of eight.

Because of chance.

Being a magician relies on being born something. Something determined by luck and the soul of a long dead man that floats around in little invisible particles that are always so out of reach to real people. It forces people to face the fact that all men are not equal. That we aren't as free to change fate as we want or that we have the power to stop ourselves and each other from falling into darkness and depravity. It makes us envious and bitter and filled with overwhelming sorrow that touches every part of our lives.

Every part with the exception of the art of the sword.

When you pick up the sword, you are nothing, not a magician or a trader or a man or a woman until you work for it. And when you work for it, you hold your soul, your fate, your own special brand of magic in your hands for better or worse.

And no amount of anything in all of the worlds imaginable can take it away from you.

So yeah, Sharrkan is totally right when he says that swords are better.

**AN:: Would you look at that, the bitch ain't dead. Sorry I've been gone, had the worst ever case of writer's block that's only being overcome at four am by making tacos and chocolate chip cookies. No joke.**


End file.
